Pew has a great writeup of why randomized samples matter, and I believe that plays heavily into the lack of traction that the survey is gaining amongst flags. The short version is thus: without a random sample, that there is no way of knowing if the survey is representative of the population - and thus easily dismissed.
The solution is easy in concept - get a random set of email addresses from big Navy - but actually executing that as an outside entity is tough.
Did the Sexual Assault survey have a good random sample? Because that survey had tons of traction, although said traction existed before the survey was ever issued.
I just don't see the Flag level really caring too much about this. It's just a swell at their level, mixed in with other swells, with most of the swells being outside any one Flag's sandbox. For the few Flags that could actually affect some sort of policy reform, I'm not sure what we could reasonably expect them to do.
- increasingly high operational tempo: Ok, CNO has already been pushing the agenda that we cannot sustain our op tempo, and that we need more ships.
- poor work/life balance: Always an issue. This will probably never go away. Not sure what the solutions are, because high op tempo is going to lead to this.
- low service-wide morale: Not low enough to make a mass-exodus impact statement. Until that happens (or some high-vis mishap that can be traced back to low morale), who cares?
- declining pay and compensation: Again, not enough to produce a mass exodus. I'm not sure how the pay is "declining" unless we're under the inflation curve, but who cares? Retention is relatively stable (I'm just assuming this is the case--I'd love to see some retention stats). Besides, command bonuses are out, so arguably, that's been addressed.
- waning desire to hold senior leadership positions: Moot. There will be zero trouble filling CO slots.
- a widespread distrust of senior leadership: I'm guessing you will always have a positive response rate to this question. Even if we'd been tracking this data set for years, if this year's round produced a spike, oh well. It'll smooth itself out, and it really doesn't matter as long as we're meeting operational commitments without other factors (mutinies, mishaps, whatever) popping up.
These are the results highlighted from the Exec Summary. So what responses are we pragmatically hoping to see from the Flag level?